Last week, I had the
opportunity to lead an enrichment class for 6th grade
math. The students had been studying operations with decimals. I
introduced them to the online game Kahoot. If you’ve never experienced
this online hit you should give it a whirl at your next social gathering.
This resource houses hundreds of quizzes ranging from educational to
trivia. (You should always preview the questions and verify accuracy of
answers before using in class.) Students join from their personal devices
using only the game pin number on the screen, no usernames or passwords to
memorize. Once students have locked in their answers the game shows a bar
graph of responses and highlights the correct and incorrect responses.
The students loved the interactive format and that scores are shared at the end
of each question. Once they were familiar with the game, I informed them
that had to create their Kahoot this week by designing their own
questions. We began with the target on the board. We had a rich
discussion of the vocabulary. What are operations and examples of
operations? What is a decimal? What are contexts that we see
decimals in? Initially, they told me they had only seen decimals with
money. The students had to create 2 bare number tasks and 2 story
problems. To up the challenge, they were required to solve their problem
to provide the correct response, but they also had to generate 3 incorrect
responses. In order to help them succeed in the game, they needed to make
those incorrect responses reflect the common errors and misconceptions they
believed their classmates might make when solving the problem.

You could tell that some
students were unsure of what to do at first. There is something
comfortable in traditional “find the correct answer” tasks. I was
requiring much more from them. The responsibility for making connections
was now theirs. As class came to a close, the students were excited to
share their questions with me and anxious to see if their questions were to be
chosen. As I poured through them I could see classmates’ names and a
celebrity or two mixed into their story problems. I also received a few
blank cards from a student who shared that she was too scared to write story
problems.

The next day as we
played the game, students announced the problems that they had created after we
solved them. They were excited to see when they had tricked a classmate
with a misconception. One student explained that he created the problem
“9.999 + 444.4” because he knew students would just add the digits without
thinking about the decimal. He pointed out that 9.999 is actually much
smaller than 444.4 when you think about the decimal. We also discovered
that students had found many contexts for decimals other than money. At the
end of the game, I was able to view a spreadsheet of each student’s response as
a formative assessment piece.

We know that
student learning is greatest in classrooms where the tasks consistently
encourage high level student thinking and reasoning and least in classrooms
where the tasks are routinely procedural in nature. Implementing tasks
that promote reasoning and problem solving allows students to engage in their
learning using the math practice standards in an authentic way. In
this activity, the students had ownership of their learning and accountability
to their peers. From a teacher’s perspective it required a great level of
trust in my students’ ability to engage in and make meaning from the
task.

Having students generate
possible questions for an answer is an easier reasoning task to create.
This is similar to a routine that many teachers use called “Number of the
Day.” In this routine students generate equivalent representations or expressions
for a number. It’s important to note however that once a task such as
this becomes routine we lose some complexity of thought. Be prepared to
replace old routines to keep the rigor high in your classroom. I have
seen intermediate classrooms begin the year with number of the day and replace
it with fraction of the day or decimal of the day. Keep in mind as well,
that to be successful at such open ended tasks students have to develop a
comfort level with multiple solutions. They must learn to accept answers
from their peers that may not reflect the same depth of thought as their
own. Students who struggle with this, such as my friend with 2 blank
question cards, should be monitored and encouraged until they develop a deeper
capacity to work with such ideas.

Children’s literature is
a great launching point for high-level tasks. One of my favorite tasks
pairs nicely with The Napping House. After reading the book
we play “Who Lives in My House?” In this task, students tell the number
of feet living in their house. The class sets to work creating all the
possibilities of human and pet configurations that could be in the student’s
home. This activity allows for modeling, multiplication, and even writing
expressions with variables.

Not all tasks must be real-world
problems. Students can investigate mathematical concepts in the context
of materials as well. With primary students I love to explore odd and
even numbers with the game “Spill and Compare”. In this game, partner
pairs are given a number of two-sided counters in a labeled cup. They
take turns spilling the counters and comparing the number of red and yellow
counters. Students record their results on paper by tallying under the
headings “More Red”, “More Yellow”, and “Same”. As students
engage in this game, pairs with odd numbers will begin to notice that they
never get to mark “Same”. As the complaints roll in I usually give a
“permission to cheat” rule. If you haven’t gotten “same” you have
permission to move the manipulative yourself to create the same. This is
where I will allow my most vocal student to be the spokesperson for the odd
numbered pairs. This student gets to inform the class that while they
have tried some of the numbers are not able to have the same number of reds and
yellows. As a class we collect the data from each partner pair on chart
paper and identify which numbers worked nicely for the game and which did
not. Then we name them “even” and “odd”. Because students had this
authentic experience with even and odd before being introduced to the words, it
gave the words meaning. They have a much deeper understanding of odd and
even than they would have received from traditional methods.

High-level tasks do not
necessarily require a great deal of time to create, but they do require great
thought. It’s important to keep in mind the mathematics that you would
like students to engage in. Identifying the big ideas first helps you to
find connections between math concepts. Select a context that is relevant
to your students. If you need to create your own tasks, search
mathematical tasks or try some of the resources listed at the end of this
post. Professional learning communities are a great place to collaborate
on high level tasks. After trying a few with your class you may find that
you better understand how to create them.

Once you have created or
selected your task, you will need to be mindful in how you present the task to
the class. Launch the problem, without giving hints. Support
students as they work. This is a time for you to gather evidence of
student learning and strategies. You may consider asking guiding
questions. Keep in mind that after the investigation you will bring the
class together to summarize the learning. The student work time is when
you will be preparing for this discussion. Plan to allow students to
share their strategies from the simplest to the most complex. If students
are working in cooperative groups, listen as they work. Make a note of
students who may have made important connections to the learning you had hoped
to address. When the task time has ended, bring the students together to
share their thinking and noticings. Use the students’ experiences when
you can to summarize the learning of the day. These authentic experiences
create rich connections that ensure lasting learning will occur.

This is also a time to
monitor your own behaviors and thoughts. It is part of our human nature
to want to help. This is why many of us became educators. But the
temptation it very real to help our students to the point of giving them our
own thoughts. When students make authentic connections the learning is
lasting. Preparing yourself in advance for these feelings will help you
suppress the urge to think for the students. If you see a student off
track in their thinking encourage them to discuss it with a peer or ask some
guiding questions, but refrain from just telling.

Some teachers have
concerns with such tasks because of the time required. With strict
adherence to a pacing guide or textbook series teachers feel pressure to move
to the next lesson or skill. In many cases, these rich, open-ended tasks
allow students to engage in multiple standards and can expose math that we
hadn’t intended to introduce just yet. For example, in a fourth grade
classroom students were exploring equivalency of fractions in a game
setting. The teacher had planned to spend the next week on addition and
multiplication of fractions, however the students had made the connection
during the task. The teacher was able to follow up with some practice and
continue through the curriculum.

Want to find more tasks
to promote reasoning and problem-solving? Try these great resources!

Have a great resource of
idea about reasoning and problem solving tasks? We want to hear from
you! Tell us what you think! Share with us on Twitter
@kycenterformath #KCMTalks or on Facebook at Kentucky Center for Mathematics.

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Author

Chrystal Rowland serves as an instructional coach at North Washington Elementary, Washington County Schools, KY. Prior to her current position, Chrystal served as a mathematics intervention teacher leader for 8 years. She is currently leading a KCM coaching community, serving as the first elementary grades KCM Master Coach....Read more